Of Venn Diagrams

John Gruber is neither profound nor original. He is merely famous.
 - William Dunham
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and Daring Fireball.
 - Benjamin Disraeli

The Mac users of today are, by and large, the Mac users of 10 years ago. If you drew a Venn diagram with a circle representing Mac users circa 1996 and another circle representing Mac users circa 2006, the two circles would be about the same size and would significantly overlap.
 - John 'Daring Fireball' Goober

Utter rubbish.

But first, some background since Goober chooses to mention 1996. I joined the Mac cult in 1997 with my very first 'real' computer. Before the Mac, I used a Brother notebook hooked up with an old Okidata dot matrix printer for my secondary school term papers (no shit). And before that? A Smith Corona typewriter. I didn't know SHIT about computers until I had learned to use DOS and write papers using MS Works.

I used Macs in schools (mostly System 7) but hated them for their constant lock-ups.

My PowerBook 1400 at the time ran System 7.6 (then 8.0 thanks to a borrowed CD in the dorms). I absolutely hated the Macintosh platform because my folks and the university computer store both coerced me into buying a Mac because it was 'the better platform'. My computer education was with DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows NT, although at the time I didn't understand the difference between 95 and NT.

And just like the Macs I used in the past, I had to endure the constant crashes and lock-ups. But I put up with it because it was either that or Windows. I knew nothing about Linux.

When OS X surfaced? I remember Rob Griffiths getting into heated disputes with the likes of thalo over at Macfixit. The OS X Talk forum became a battleground between the OS X and OS 9 fanboy camps. Griffiths left and started Mac OS X Hints and thalo started his own web site, which is a cult for OS 9 fanboys. They even call each other 'brothers'. Hehe.

A Venn diagram showing sets 'A' (Maccie fanboys) and 'B' (gays with small penises) merging into 'A+B'. The sets are completely congruent.

But back to Goober's Venn diagram, or at least his version of it. It's safe to say that the same MacOS 9 users bitched so much about the OS X public beta that 10.0 was somewhat converted into a beige box. And it went all downhill from there. [Perhaps this is where the irony lies?] So much that the OS 9 and Mac fanboys complained and made OS X watered down into an almost OS 9 clone that some are now seeking greener pastures - eg Mark and Cory.

Since OS X officially debuted at 10.0, I know many people who migrated to the Macintosh platform BECAUSE of OS X, not because of Apple's 'wonderful' hardware/software integration, the PowerPC, or whatever marketing BS Cupertino were putting out. No, they switched because they wanted to work in OS X and it wasn't Windows. Linux on the desktop was still not a viable option.

To say that the Mac users now are the same from 1996? Bullshit. Had OS X not come to fruition those switchers would still be on Windows unless they were competent enough to give Linux a whirl.

I am definitely not the same user from 1997. If I had to go back? I would have NEVER bought a Mac. OS X is what kept me on the platform until recently. I bought my clamshell iBook in anticipation of running OS X on it. (We all know how 10.0 turned out.) Then came the 600 Mhz G3 iBook in hopes of running Puma on it at faster speeds. Pfft. Tiger barely runs on it. Finally the PowerBook G4 because I outgrew the iBook's tiny 1024x768 screen.

Why did I keep on buying Macs? Because I didn't want Windows. Ubuntu didn't come around until 2004, long after my purchase, and it wasn't until this past January I discovered it and made my foray into Linux.

Go ahead and search my past posts on MacNN or all of the other fanboy Mac sites. You can call me a fanboy for all I care with the posts I made in defending the Mac platform, but I stopped being one after Oompa and a little after when the emperor commenced his undressing ceremony garment by garment. Being lied to doesn't sit well with me.

Alphasubzero949 is the secret code name of a molecular biologist who also administers beige and other boxes in a research lab.